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Show RIVER Now all we had to do was build a raft. We had a pretty good design and attacked the work with a will that compensated for our nonexistent experience. The basic frame was built of 2x10s, from which we hung two rows of nine oil drums secured in place with steel plumber's tape. The deck was pine 1x6s and we built a box-like cabin twelve feet long using half inch plywood on a 2x2 frame. The overall length was twenty-eight feet, with a beam of eight feet. Most of the construction was done in four days. The cost of lumber, barrels and hardware came to about $250. On our first working day we put the 2x10 frame together with lag bolts. On Friday we lifted the frame up onto braces and began hanging the barrels: to do the job, we bought up all the plumber's tape in Rock Island. It was rough work. I'd lie under the barrel, pushing it up into the box-like frame, while Rick nailed the steel tape tight. Saturday we laid the deck planking and by Sunday we had most of the cabin built. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever done. Watching Vince, Rick and me work, it would be hard to understand how we managed to do it so quickly. Rick and I fought over how something should be done and Vince watched us battle it out until somebody won. I'd read everything ever written about Horatio Hornblower and threatened to hang Rick for mutiny. He was reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and he'd rant in a thick German accent and smash stray scraps of wood into splinters. Vince would lie down. Finally we'd settle the dispute and start talking normally and get back to work, the raft coming alive under our hands. Sometimes we'd stand back and look at our creation and imagine it out on the river. "Look at it, just look at it," I'd say. "We did it with our own hands." Vince would nod quietly and say, "Yep." -58- |